Many-core startup builds out ecosystem

LONDON – Startup Kalray SA, which has been sampling a 256-core processor for several months, announced that is has completed a European collaborative research project and raised an additional 5 million euros (about $6.9 million) of funding.

The MPPA 256 has been manufactured for Kalray by foundry Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. in a 28-nm process technology.

The 22 million euro (about $29 million) Prometheus project was focused on the development of third-party support and tools for Kalray's MPPA (multipurpose processor array) processor. It was conducted with eight partners and contributed to the creation and growth of a Kalray ecosystem of industrial partners, the company said.

Among the results from Prometheus demonstrated at the end of 2012 was the successful running of video processing, cryptography and signal processing applications on the processor as well as the use of Accesscore, the high-level programming environment for the MPPA 256 chip. In addition, MicroEJ, a Java programming and runtime environment from Industrial Smart Software Technology SA (Nantes, France) has been ported to the MPPA 256. Docea Power SA (Grenoble, France) has demonstrated its EDA tool for power consumption analysis running on the processor.

The successful completion of Prometheus project allowed Kalray (Orsay, France) to raise additional funds from its established investors including ACE management and InnoCap.

Click on image to enlarge.

Block diagram of the MPPA-256.

Source: Kalray

"Kalray's technology has been developed with many OEM partners across several vertical markets as well as through partnering with third-party software vendors," said Joel Monnier, CEO of Kalray, in a statement. "During the Prometheus final review we have demonstrated that our MPPA Manycore chip has reached silicon proven status and that our MPPA developer solution is ready for the market."

Kalray was founded in July 2008 and has raised more than $20 million in venture capital. The company employs a team of more than 50 engineers as well as having access to 30 researchers working in a joint laboratory with CEA-Leti in Grenoble. The company also claims to have amassed a portfolio of 45 patents.

The company is embarking on a follow-on collaborative research project called ManyCoreLabs valued at 32 million euro (about $43 million) due to run from 2012 to 2015. That project is intended to address the application of the Manycore chip to embedded systems and includes about a dozen companies including car maker Renault and defense and communications company Thales.

William, but is it worth such upgrades? I mean, there are millions spent on these improvements, size reductions and power efficiency..
These days our country desperately needs money. Spending it on small chips is pointless I reckon!
http://www.sctnomination.com/

I think that hardware upgrades will improve all spheres of living - medicine, education, science and entertainment. The more sophisticated the tools we have will be, the more comfort we'll have. I doubt that I will ever see or use this 256-core processor)) But now I at least know it exists) Schengen travel insurance